Paris Hearts: Chase Me by Laura Florand

Relentless, determined, good with knives, and the hero is no slouch either. In this Laura Florand contemporary romance, she proves again why she’s one of my favourite authors by having two badass leads instead of the usual one.

Violette Lenoir meets Chase Smith when he breaks into her Michelin two-star restaurant right before she leaves for the night. He’s some kind of former SEAL government operative – though he claims to work in private security – but she doesn’t know that when she starts throwing knives at him. Instead of being cowed, Chase realises that this leather clad, no-nonsense chef is the woman of his dreams. A rather delightful round of insouciant banter follows and the two embark on a relationship by assignation.

Vi and Chase are the most playful of all the Florand’s leads which is quite a feat given the counter-terrorism elements and that, by the author’s own post script admission, she had reworked the story following the horrifying November 2015 Paris attacks. They add reality and motivation to Chase’s professional zeal and grounding to the overall plot, not in an overwhelming way but as a dose of reality against the brightness of tone and an especially condensed timeline.

I really enjoyed Chase Me and was pleased to discover that several more stories were clearly being set up for Chase and Vi’s counterparts. Mostly, I reveled in how strong and tough Vi was. Having two tough as nails, protector types going toe-to-toe, and with each savouring the other’s inherent badassery , was a lovely change of pace. Strong heroine’s are not unusual in romance, but Vi was more explicitly tough than most women in these books.